Billions to Subsidize Nuclear Energy 2/16

Institute for Public Accuracy
980 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org
___________________________________________________
The New York Times reports today: "In a speech in Lanham, Md., Mr. Obama
announced government approval of an $8.3 billion loan guarantee to help
the Southern Company build two reactors in Burke County, Georgia, near
Augusta."
ROBERT ALVAREZ http://www.ips-dc.org/staff/robert
A former senior policy adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Energy and
now a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, Alvarez just
wrote the piece "Nukes Aren't the Answer," which states: "Wall Street
has refused to finance nuclear power for more than 30 years, rendering
new construction impossible. The Obama administration, in a move to
placate Senate Republicans, proposes to fund new power reactors with
some $54.5 billion in federal loan guarantees. Because of the way the
guarantees are structured, the actual loans will be made by the Federal
Financing Bank out of the U.S. Treasury. Last year, the Government
Accountability Office estimated that these loans have more than a 50-50
chance of failing. ... [D]espite Obama's rhetoric about reshaping
America's energy future, he's asking for a budget that would have the
Energy Department continue to spend 10 times more on nuclear weapons
than energy conservation." http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/15-2
KEVIN KAMPS, http://www.beyondnuclear.org
Kamps, a specialist in nuclear waste at Beyond Nuclear, said today:
"President Obama's nuclear loan guarantee now forces American taxpayers
to bear 80 percent of the financial risks for two proposed new
Toshiba-Westinghouse so-called 'Advanced Passive (AP) 1000' atomic
reactors. The Japanese export bank will bear the financial risks for
much of the rest. This leaves Southern Nuclear Company of Georgia free
to engage in a 'moral hazard' with a radiological risk twist, given the
major safety design flaw with the reactor's shield building identified
by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission just last October. Thus,
taxpayers are damned if they do, damned if they don't. If the reactors
go belly-up, taxpayers will be on the hook for many billions in loan
repayment. If the flawed design actually gets built and operates,
communities downwind and downstream will be at radiological risk from
tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, or crashing airliners releasing
catastrophic amounts of deadly radioactivity from the vulnerable reactors."
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541)
484-9167.